


Brand New Sounds in My Mind

by thegoodthebadandthenerdy



Series: Femslash Feb 2019 [1]
Category: American Vandal (TV)
Genre: Character Study, F/F, Femslash February 2019, Mostly Canon Compliant, Post-Canon, Short & Sweet, a little s2 fall out, actual jenna characterization oh my god, and a lot of falling in love ayee
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-01
Updated: 2019-02-01
Packaged: 2019-10-20 06:34:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,945
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17617337
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thegoodthebadandthenerdy/pseuds/thegoodthebadandthenerdy
Summary: A lesson in fanning flames instead of letting them fizzle out.Day One: Strike





	Brand New Sounds in My Mind

**Author's Note:**

> yall i am SO excited to kick off femslash feb!!! and to be back w vandsl fic, w my jebi gals at tht,, feels rlly good
> 
> title is from green light by lorde

The match lights on the second try, sweet chemicals fizzling, puffing up with a false bravado, leeching onto the wood so unsuspecting.

Jenna shakes it out once the fire has taken its full hold. The logs crackling in front of her try their best to cover the smell of a doused wick with their pleasant earthiness. It reminds her of days gone by, when she sould stand next to her grandfather as he stoked a roaring flame, playing at a world in which he was a dashing night and the fireplace was the mouth of a beastly, greedy dragon.

But there are no dragons left, the knights have disbanded. She is cold, and there is only the orange lull of the flame, and her phone spitting out the somber, yearning tones of Lorde's voice. 

It's almost pitiful, really. No, it is pitiful. Absolutely fucking pitiful that here she is, shacked up in the motionless recesses of her parents gaping maw house, all alone with her melodramatic angst.

Christ, it's absolutely fucking pitiful.

But there's nowhere else left, nowhere to go that she hasn't alienated herself from the other goers, or that they haven't chopped her out on their own.

She wishes for the simplicity of not understanding life. For when she was seven years old, face muddied from slipping around in the rain, for when she was eight years old, standing with bruised and bloodied knees at the helm of a treehouse, for when she was nine years old and had no fucking clue what came next.

But she isn't any of those things, she's nineteen, and she is so ceaselessly alone.

Her phone buzzes from the mantle above her head, but she lets her coal lump eyes catch fire for a while longer before she ever deigns to even think about looking at it.

It had taken months before she'd touch it again, instead opting for emails like she was some forty-something CEO that didn't understand the technology of the surrounding youth.

The day she'd picked it back up, high noon on any given Thursday, she'd gone through and cherry-picked exactly one dozen contacts to keep. The rest she deleted without a care, and she had never felt more free than she had in that moment. Like stepping off a cliff's ledge and knowing it was only a few feet drop, that something would catch her and hold her close. That was the first time in a long time she'd been held close to anything.

Since that great purge, she only dabbled with her phone for absolute necessity. She'd gotten a job, so she used it to keep up with her manager - a contactless number she knew by heart because it was too much, somehow, to break that even twelve. But that was mostly it. Her parents never called, her one cousin that still associated with her texted when he had cell-service in whatever country of the week he found himself in, and it wasn't often she heard from Sam.

More often than not, she called him. She liked his company when she was out window-gazing, not shopping much anymore, and despite her initial judgement of him, he wasn't completely hopeless, could actually be helpful, usually was without even realizing it.

That was how she'd met Gabi.

Really, met was a strong word. Jenna had called, as she always did, from the middle of the sidewalk in the middle of working hours, to debate the pros and cons of a particularly gruesome piece of clothing she'd seen in the display of a boutique she'd used to frequent.

Instead of his regular, jet-streamed greeting, she'd gotten the most amazing laugh she'd ever heard, and a, _city morgue!_ before Sam had wrestled the phone away.

She hadn't been sure in that moment, but something had possessed her, and she'd made Sam put Gabi back on the phone. It had been a snap decision that she hadn't ever found the conclusion to.

An afternoon of chatting with the mythic Gabi Granger, travel department head and sole worker ant, best friend and probable life coach, had turned into swapping numbers and talking without constant beeps interrupting them because Sam was in a group chat with Dylan Maxwell's band of bros and his personal chain with Peter shut down only about as early as a rave. Swapped numbers had become this weird, in between place after meeting, but before friendship.

Admittedly, that gap of time was always more with Jenna. Jenna Hawthorne, the resting bitch faced little girl that had let her heart get broken, she wasn't that great at letting people in, after all. 

But Gabi had this way about her. She could commiserate with the best of them, but she'd never let you dwell in it. She was full of righteous, girl might, a glow in the dark star stuck to the ceiling of life, and she never let you forget it.

It wasn't hard to fall for her, was harder to stop it dead in its tracks, harder still to try to keep it in when it reared its head for every laugh she spilled and smile she saved just for her for their nightly FaceTimes.

It had been so easy to fall for her, and try as she might, Jenna still hadn't been able to get back up.

Which is why when she turns over that slowly becoming outdated iPhone, Jenna isn't surprised that her heart hammers when she sees Gabi's name lighting up the screen. 

That had only happened a few weeks ago, when she'd almost texted her manager a dumb joke that would latch perfectly into the text chain just above theirs. Gabi Granger had become her baker's dozen, her number thirteen. Unlucky, Jenna had tsked when she realized it, unlucky in love.

It's a text, simple and sweet, the way she knows that Jenna prefers to keep written correspondence these days.

> Can you talk?  
< Yeah whats up

The FaceTime request blings in a fraction of a second later, but Jenna doesn't let it startle in her chest, just accepts it and plops back down to get cozy in front of the fire.

"Hey," Gabi says, face flushed in this moonlight opera, one that Jenna so desperately wants to play her part in.

"Hey."

"Are you okay?"

Jenna huffs a laugh, self-depricating to a point it's almost an absence of sound. She doesn't deny the answer it must give.

"Jen," Gabi starts, and all Jenna wants, all she wsnts is to hear that nickname over and under. She'd always hated it, hated who it made her seem like, but in the cadence of Gabi's voice it almost makes her seem like the girl she wants to be.

"It's been a shitty week, Gabs. What can I say."

"Give me a second," she replies, her lips pursed with a declaration that Jenna can't quite define. "My signal is absolute shit out here."

"Where are you?"

"Outside the bowling alley, Sam needed a partner for doubles night," she explains without even being prompted. Her voice is serene, and Jenna wants to live in the feeling it leaves her with. A relaxation in her chest that even the best of the best of smoke curling in her lungs can't produce.

"And you got the draft instead of Peter?"

"Peter has the hand-eye coordination of a baby duck and Sam actually wanted to beat Dyl and Ganj, so, here I am."

"Here you are. Why aren't you inside?"

She hums slightly, exhaling a puff of cold-smoke, not artificial but instead made from the warmth of her mouth that Jenna has contemplated too many times.

"Needed a breather, and we're at a breaking point. I was thinking about you, so I figured it was the perfect time to call."

Jenna didn't really know what the fuck she was supposed to do with that, but hell, that was her with most things these days.

"Plus, I've been trying to ask you something for a week, and if I don't do it now I'll probably never, and I just might hate myself for eternity if I don't."

"Those are bold words, Granger."

Gabi smiles slightly at the use of her last name. "It's nothing bad, get down from your pedigree high horse, Jen."

Jenna can't help but laugh for real this time, and it does something funny to Gabi's face. Kind of smoothes it out while still pulling it in in this achey way that Jenna feels rattling deep in her core.

"Then do it."

She doesn't know what she's just walked into, but it makes her feel electric.

"I'm gonna have some free time during break, and I was thinking maybe I could make the drive," she starts, trying to find footing on what seems to be loose ground to her. "Um, and I was thinking we could get dinner?"

At first, Jenna hadn't really known why Gabi was making such a big deal about it. They'd done the travel, met up more than a few times - really, physical contact was a prerequisite for friendship with Jenna A. Hawthorne these days - spent days and nights in one anothers company. It's once she says dinner that Jenna feels that fork in a wall socket feeling in her hands.

They've had boozy brunches, and airy lunches, but they've never done dinner. It felt too real, too much, too presumptuous. Like it could lead to nights that don't end in slumber party laughter, but instead two bodies curled up in front of the fireplace instead of one.

"Dinner," she repeats, trying to get the inflection right.

"Yeah, uh," Gabi stumbles, and Gabi never stumbles, but Jenna wouldn't mind it if it was a prelude to a certain kind of falling. "So, I guess the thing is that I kind of think about you all the time. And I want to be where you are or I want you with me, and I just want- I just want, Jenna. God, do I want. So, maybe we can get dinner, and maybe we can just talk. Face to face, you and me, because I have more I want to say, that I think you need to hear, and I'd rather not do it while I'm in a back alley that smells a little too much like piss for my taste."

Jenna doesn't know. What the fuck. To do with that. So, she blurts out the first thing she can think of.

"I put your number in my phone. A few weeks ago."

"You- did?"

Jenna had explained the twelve thing to Gabi a long time ago, had tried to make it flippant, but as with everything with Gabi, the conversation had wrung out Jenna's bleeding heart on the carpet in the foyer. And Gabi had gotten it, when no one else did, she had.

"And I put one of those little hearts with the arrow through it beside your name because you have got my heart all fucked up, Gabi Granger." And there was the feeling, that cliff's edge, balancing on a toothpick falling feeling. 

Gabi's responding grin was like soaring, though.

"Yours is the little spinning star," she says. "I almost made it the double heart, but Sam has no qualms about looking at my phone, and I didn't want him to know, didn't want you to find out from anyone else but me, but I figured that was a safe bet, and it still works, because I can't say you don't make me feel like I'm seeing stars."

"Just so you know," Jenna says calmly, "I'm going to kiss you like you've never been kissed when you get here."

"Counting on it."

**Author's Note:**

> i'm on tumblr @wlwshehulk !!


End file.
